New mobile device does Twitter and only Twitter

The Twitter Peek, which debuts on Amazon.com today, flies in the face of the “everything-and-every-app-you’ll-ever-need-in-your-life” marketing used to promote today’s smart phones.

This hand held device does Twitter and nothing but Twitter. The question is are there enough people out there who will shell out as much as $199 for a one-trick pony?

The Twitter Peek also comes in charcoal gray. (Peek Inc.)

Executives at Peek Inc. of New York aren’t betting on the tech-savvy crowd. Rather, they believe the Twitter Peek will interest customers who own simple, inexpensive cell phones, yet still want to read their Twitter news updates and other tweets away from the desktop.

“Twitter’s more useful on a mobile device,” said Peek founder and CEO Amol Sarva.

You might remember Peek’s first products introduced last year – the Peek Classic, which just does e-mail and costs $19.95, and the $59.95 Peek Pronto, which accesses up to five e-mail accounts and can send and receive text messages. Each requires a wireless service plans that start at $15 per month.

Unlike the earlier Peeks, named one of Time Magazine’s Gadgets of the Year, the Twitter Peek doesn’t do e-mail or texting.

I’ve been testing a demo model for the past week and it does its one-and-only job well enough – it provided an easy way to read my Twitter feeds. On the device, I learned that Mayor Gavin Newsom dropped out of the governor’s race, that the Giants hired a new hitting coach named Bam Bam and that Twitter co-founder Biz Stone saw a spider outside his window.

It looks like an older Blackberry and comes in a Twitter-style aqua blue or charcoal gray. Fittingly, it can chirp when a tweet arrives.

The display lists the start of each message and who it’s from, and you click a scroll wheel on the side to view the entire 140-character tweet.

Handy keyboard shortcuts let you jump from one message to the next or start a new tweet. And one new feature rolled out last week gives you the ability to view links. One minor quibble: I found having to double-click on the side scroll wheel to view a tweet clumsy.

At launch, the Twitter Peek costs $99 for six months, which includes the monthly wireless data service through T-Mobile, and $7.95 per month afterward, with no service contract. Or you can fork over a one-time $199 payment that includes wireless service for the lifetime of the device.

Is it a better experience than something like a Twitter-specific app on an iPhone? No. But Sarva says that’s not the point. He argues that not everyone wants to spend $100 to $300 for a smart phone and another $30 each month or so for a data plan.

From that point of view, he calls it “the better way to Twitter.”

I’m still not convinced there’s going to be a big market for the Twitter Peek because people who opt for a cell phone that only makes calls probably aren’t going to be hooked on Twitter enough to want to buy and carry another single-purpose device.